“Good God—behold completed this poor little Mass,” wrote Rossini in the preface to his Petite Messe solennelle. “Is it indeed sacred music [la musique sacrée] that I have just written, or merely some damned music [la sacré musique]? You know well, I was born for comic opera.” It’s not hard to spot the traces of greasepaint in this “solemn little mass”, from the tenor’s jaunty “Domine Deus” to those trademark sing-song woodwinds and an interpolated “O salutaris hostia” for soprano, which sounds remarkably like a grand operatic scena. But for all the composer’s attempts at self- deprecation, the Petite Messe solennelle is a work of refinement and serenity, whose theatrical touches, if not always strictly solemn, are essential to its uplifting character. From the opening of the Kyrie, with its finely spun tempi and pellucid choral singing, this new release establishes itself as an arresting account. Pappano conducts with a meticulous hand and a masterful sense of pacing, allowing the Mass’s expansive and contemplative moments ample space to unfold without denying its effusive side and sprightly rhythms. The quartet of soloists is well chosen and balanced. Soprano Marina Rebeka particularly impresses, with incisive tone and firm grasp of the…

Concert planners seem to have turned away from the overture. Time-poor 21st-century audiences want to plunge straight into the main event, yet I for one would not complain if my evening began with the high-spirited Donna Diana Overture by Rezniçek or Nicolai’s overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor. For the overture-deprived, these five separate releases are invaluable. Taken from the Decca catalogue and recorded mostly in the late 1950s, they include almost every overture of note – or every note of overtures – between Gluck and Mascagni. (Missing are Berlioz, favourites like Mendelssohn’s Hebrides and Brahms’s Academic Festival and the best 19th-century light overture: Sullivan’s for Iolanthe.) The conductors are specialists and primarily men of the theatre, so performances are idiomatic. Vol 5 has Gianandrea Gavazzeni conducting the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Florentino in Italian overtures and intermezzi; Vol 3 explores the German repertoire (including four by Beethoven and two by Schubert) with the cool, clear-headed Karl Münchinger. Viennese overtures in Vol 4 are in the capable hands of Willi Boskovsky and the Vienna Philharmonic, setting a standard in Johann Strauss and Suppé. Vol 1 contains rare music: preludes from operas which are rarely performed, such as Schreker’s Die…

This April 2012 recital heralded Vengerov’s return to recital work after a period where an exercise injury had forced him to concentrate on conducting. Consisting of two monumental works of the repertory, Bach’s D-Minor Partita and Beethoven’s Kreutzer sonata, the program seems designed to allow the artist to re-present his credentials to the public, which he does quite convincingly. Although structured like a suite of dances, the Partita issues the performer with enormous artistic challenges in shaping the musical material, most especially in the concluding Ciaccona. Vengerov chooses a stately and spacious approach on the whole, leaving quicksilver effects to others. (Richard Tognetti comes to mind.) I was left with the impression that in his Bach playing Venegerov is anxious to make every note count with beauty and weight of tone. Admirable though this is, the listener can lose sight of the bigger picture and the rhythmic thrust inherent in the dance-like origins of the work. Supported by Itamar Golan’s empathetic pianism, Vengerov’s Beethoven is thoroughly irenic. The joy of performing is powerfully communicated by both players and they give this famous work a wonderful breadth of expression. The Presto finale is particularly appealing when it is delivered with the…

  Given that Felix Mendelssohn was one of the greatest pianists of his age, it is surprising that his writing for his own instrument has not stood the test of time, unlike his large-scale orchestral and choral works. The sonatas are not seen as breaking new ground and it’s only the sets of Lieder ohne Worte that have held their own on record and in the concert hall. His 20th-century reputation is for Victorian sentimentality and lack of depth, so his music feels ripe for reassessment. This appealing selection of early pieces – a sonata, some “characteristic pieces”, a capriccio and the lovely first book of Songs Without Words – reveals a young composer following in the footsteps of Clementi, Hummel and Weber while still paying homage to the great J.S. Bach. There’s plenty to delight here. The madcap Capriccio in F-Sharp Minor, Op 5 is all scurrying figurations and galumphing leaps with a cleverly interpolated fugue in the middle. The seven Charakterstücke are a revelation: crafted, varied and imaginative genre pieces foreshadowing Schumann. The only disappointment is the pretty but rather rambling sonata. Howard Shelley’s approach is accomplished and respectful, with plenty of insights. Given that so much of…

  Eton College was founded by King Henry VI in 1443 and within 50 years had amassed a unique body of English choral music collected together in what is known today as the Eton Choirbook. Given the collection’s focus on devotion to the Blessed Virgin, its survival of the Henrician Reformation of the 1530s is a minor miracle. The Sixteen made a recommendable recorded foray into this repertoire back in the 1990s, but the choir of Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral has two special claims to authenticity: first, as a group with an unbroken tradition of daily choral services and second, and most importantly, the inclusion of 14 boy sopranos amongst 33 exclusively male voices. Boys’ voices are less common in recordings of the Eton pieces, probably because of the discipline required to tackle unaccompanied works on this scale. Of the five pieces here, four involve over 15 minutes of complex polyphony and one, Lambe’s titanic O Maria plena gracia, weighs in at over 20 minutes – an intonational endurance test, as any singer will tell you. That these singers carry all before them is a tribute to their conductor Stephen Darlington, who directs his substantial forces with flair and a…

Orchestras around the world are increasing their activities in the field of education and community outreach.

Our next stop after Lyon was Polyfollia, a festival of choral music from all across the world held in Normandy. We tackled the challenge of loading 41 choristers, nine adults, and over 50 suitcases onto our TGV to Paris with grande vitesse and sat back to enjoy the French countryside pass us by. On arrival in Paris, we were met by Felicity and Richard, chaperones par excellence who formed a crucial part of the Polyfollia team of volunteers who would look after us so well for the next week. Since 2004, Polyfollia has been welcoming choirs to contribute to a magnificent aural and visual feast in wonderful venues across the north of France. This year’s festival was the third for Artistic Director and Founder of the choir, Lyn Williams, who said she "enjoys Polyfollia more each time [she] comes back". Once we’d settled into our university accommodation, we headed to meet the Estonian TV Girls’ Choir and their conductor, Aarne Saluveer. Over the course of the evening we got to know our fellow singers and conductors by singing for each other and chatting over supper. This sort of choral sharing across international borders is central to Polyfollia’s excellence as a festival,…

One acerbic US critic dismissed Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony as “a woolly mammoth which emerged after the Stalinist freeze”. Once upon a time I would have said, “I wish I’d thought of that!” Now, I’m not so sure. Yes, it’s still a sacred monster and Gergiev’s reading lasts more than 82 minutes (two and a half minutes longer than his previous effort, which also featured the bizarre combination of both the Rotterdam and Kirov orchestras because, apparently, the composer wanted the work played by two ensembles – a fact new to me). However, I’d forgotten just how much of the score is actually quite dark and brooding. This reading has none of the agonized, self-dramatised protraction of Bernstein’s mid- 1980s version with the Chicago Symphony (his only recorded foray with that orchestral war machine) which clocks in at 85 minutes. In this version with the Mariinsky Orchestra (formerly Kirov) Gergiev demonstrates again what a superb orchestral builder he is. Unlike, say, Petrenko in Liverpool, whose orchestra has long had exposure through a large of body of recordings, the Kirov Orchestra was largely unknown in the West before Gergiev’s emergence as a major podium force. There’s little agit- prop bombast here, and……

  The Venezuelan educator and politician José Antonio Abreu has added another string to his bow, one to sit proudly alongside his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, firebrand conductor Gustavo Dudamel and a revolutionary approach to music education, El Sistema modern recordings in the catalogue presented in the familiar warm acoustic associated with the Yellow Label. The main reason for my unreserved praise lies with the viscerally exciting take on the criminally neglected Argentinean Alberto Ginastera’s First Quartet from 1948. There have been several recordings (an initiative which now has its first local teacher based in Adelaide). Comprised of four of his orchestra’s string section leaders, he has devised an exciting young ensemble of the highest order. In their debut recording, the Simón Bolívar Quartet presents a wisely chosen program bringing together three seemingly disparate composers in Ginastera, Dvorák and Shostakovich. Dvorák’s popular American quartet was written during the composer’s stay in the States and develops its own specific folk motifs – it’s this ingenious idea that brings together a trio of geographically separated composers on this fine disc. In his Eighth Quartet Shostakovich goes even further, quoting his own earlier Trio Op 67. In itself it’s a lament for the…

  The two extremes of Schumann’s personality exist side by side in the two sets of pieces recorded here. The Fantasiestücke of 1837 alternate between the introverted, reflective Schumann (his Eusebius alter ego) and the extrovert, somewhat manic Schumann (Florestan). No wonder, as the sleeve note states, this was regarded as “difficult and private music”. In the eight Kreisleriana of the following year, Schumann juxtaposed these expressive extremes more blatantly, even chaotically. Pianists attempting these pieces not only require considerable fluency at the keyboard; they need to convey the sudden changes of attitude. When that is achieved, as it is here, the music springs to life and the work of Schumann’s contemporaries seems impersonal by comparison. As befitting a great chamber musician, Imogen Cooper’s strengths lie in the detail of her playing and a finely honed ability to separate important thematic material from accompaniment in thicker textures. While reflective moments are bewitchingly otherworldly in her hands, she finds power in the fast music without resorting to overemphasis (or, let’s be frank, bashing). Cooper is equally at home in the variations Brahms transcribed from his String Sextet Op 18, but the prize of this disc is the Schumann, where a distinguished…

Choral music aficionados will love this program, featuring as it does two great mass settings of the twentieth century, Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir and Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem. Both works in their own way exude a very Gallic musical and spiritual sensibility. Martin’s a cappella Mass is an early work and reflects something of his Swiss Calvinist upbringing, but its austerity is relieved with some lush harmony derived from his love of French composers Franck and Debussy. Duruflé’s Requiem is a thoroughly Catholic affair, based largely on the plainsong Mass for the Dead but clothed in a luxuriously colourful harmonic idiom. The St George’s Consort, an adult ensemble formed in 2008, handles the Martin with equal amounts of skill and passion. As in all choral music recordings, a balance has to be struck between closely observed vocal power and the enchantment of distance. In the Martin, the balance is tipped in favour of immediacy. This allows for sections like the Pleni sunt coeli of the Sanctus, with its motoric rhythms, to make maximum impact as well as showing how capable the group is of sustaining long phrases like those in the Agnus Dei. The cathedral choir and consort together…

After an exuberant time in Barcelona, we met at the Palau de Musica a final time to get on the bus to Lyon. Over the course of the journey, the choristers had the opportunity to capture their impressions of tour so far, in whichever art form they desired. An esteemed judging panel at the front of the bus received musical compositions (both original and arrangements), sketches, poems, videos and photos. In the end, Abel’s original interpretation of the Barcelona streetscape (below) most impressed  the panel. We arrived in Lyon at the statue of Saint-Exupery and his little Prince to meet our host choir, La Cigale de Lyon and their vivacious director, Anne-Marie Cabut. As the choristers met their billet families, they engaged in enthusiastic practising of various levels of French. After a much-needed night’s sleep, we reconvened in Place Belle Cour the next morning, to meet Roland and Caroline, two parents of La Cigale members who had volunteered their time to show us around town for the day. Before heading off to see the sights, we began the day with a rehearsal in order to revitalise our interpretations – checking details that may have been forgotten, realigning our singing and performing…